Sakura's form glows to the naked eye, shining with pale light as she floats upwards into the sky. Even her clothing changes, the brown leather disappearing between sheets of thick, stiff white fabric.
"Well, this is a disaster in the making," Hashirama says lightly, hands tucked into pockets. "Tobirama, do you think you could—"
"Busy, brother."
Hiruzen looks between the two of them, trying to ignore the squelching noises that are accompanying the… transfer of consciousness, he supposes. Orochimaru's body is still melting in a vaguely horrifying manner, and Tobirama is indeed very busy on that front.
"Maybe if you—"
"No." Tobirama cut his brother off before he went any further. "Last time I used one of your suggestions in a field of study that I knew better, eight of the clones caught fire."
"That wasn't my fault!" Hashirama protested.
"They're so water-heavy that they shouldn't even be capable of burning, Hashirama. And you made them spontaneously combust."
"That's not fair."
"Yes, it really is."
"Excuse me," Hiruzen interrupted, and pointed up at Sakura when he managed to get his predecessors' attention. "Should we be worried about that?"
"Oh, absolutely," Hashirama immediately replies. "Very worried. Her dragging out Kaguya is never a good sign."
"She hasn't done anything yet," Hiruzen said, cautious. "She's just… floating there. I'll admit she's putting out a rather unnerving quantity of chakra and killing intent, but nonetheless…"
"Sakura is most likely battling Kaguya for a reasonable measure of control at the moment," Hashirama says. "Soon as that's done, she'll do her best to end the fighting, and then it's going to be up to us to… tone her down to her usual levels."
"Orochimaru will be more useful to that end than Hashirama and I," Tobirama notes from his position over the still, pale body. Hiruzen can just barely catch the movement of the chest below Tobirama's hands, showing that the corpselike thing that Sakura had pulled from storage was fully capable of life.
"So she isn't lying about the time-travel," he summarizes after a moment.
"Unfortunately, no. Fortunately, we now have the opportunity to modify events so that the issue that required time-travel in the first place is fixed!" Hashirama claps his hands and smiles.
Hiruzen almost asks, but that's the point in time at which Sakura begins to speak.
"To all shinobi currently fighting, this is an order: stop. Lay down your weapons, and either leave or regroup. Care for your dead and dying, heal those who can be saved, and above all, stop fighting. If you do not, I will make you wish that you had."
It does not feel like an empty threat.
Someone that is out of Hiruzen's range of sight throws a kunai with an exploding tag at Sakura.
And hand lashes out, palm raised in the direction of the kunai, and it disappears into a twisted rend in the fabric of space-time.
"Stand down," Sakura repeats, and suddenly Hiruzen feels like he's drowning on air, like the world is pressing down on him to a degree he's never felt before; he falls to his knees, unable to stay standing. "Or I will make it hurt."
"Sakura…" Hashirama mutters to himself, sounding sad. "At least she's keeping it non-lethal."
"It's going to be lethal if it keeps the medics from reaching their patients," Tobirama snaps, and then shouts at the skies. "Oi! Enough with the gravity manipulation, you're hurting innocent people!"
Sakura's head, white-haired and horned and so many forms of wrong, jerks sharply to the side to observe them. She tilts her head, staring, and then takes a deep breath as a shudder runs down her body. Gravity returns to its normal levels "Well, that's uncomfortable. Not changing my orders, though. Everyone stand down, or deal with me. "
"Best we'll be getting," Tobirama sighs, going back to whatever the hell he's doing with Orochimaru's body.
"Kaguya was influencing her more than she wanted," Hashirama explains, as though Hiruzen somehow missed that part.
"Does she actually have a plan?" He asks, instead of pointing out that he is, in fact, a very experienced and intelligent old shinobi.
"Most likely not."
Hiruzen freezes, because Hashirama was not the one to answer that. He turns slowly, carefully, to see Orochimaru sitting up in the body that Sakura brought. He has a hand to his head, and looks haggard, but alive.
He is frowning at the sky.
"Orochimaru," Hiruzen breathes.
The man's eyes flick down to him momentarily, flicker with emotion for a fraction of a second, and then return to Sakura's floating form.
"She never plans as much as she should anymore," he says, standing up and taking careful steps forward, as though he's expecting to fall at any moment. "She hasn't needed to, of course, but it means she's gotten rather used to things working out no matter how little she plans."
"You knew her, in the future they keep mentioning," Hiruzen says.
Orochimaru glances at him again, then back to Sakura. "So did you. She found you less irritating than the others, if it helps."
Hiruzen frowns at that, and considers what little he knows of the situation. The conclusion is unfortunately very obvious. "That's Haruno Sakura, isn't it? Naruto and Sasuke's teammate?"
"Yes," Orochimaru answers simply. "An older, more tired, less stable version of her, one that the Sakura you already know will hopefully never become… but yes. The woman above us was once known as Haruno Sakura."
"And you? What did you become?"
Orochimaru tilts his head. He considers. "A better person. A better leader. A friend, and later one of the dead. There is very little to enjoy when the rest of the world is dead, you see. I wouldn't consider it a suicide, though she likely did. When you've already lived centuries longer than you should have, is it truly killing yourself if all you have done is allow death to take the hold it has attempted to grab in all those years?"
"Stop philosophizing," Tobirama says, coming up behind them and practically bristling. "And help."
Orochimaru gives him a side-eyed look, then sighs and steps forward. "Sound Four, drop the barrier. Fall in. Don't attack anyone."
There's a moment where nothing happens. Then, suddenly, the four teenagers that have been holding up the barrier shunshin in behind Orochimaru.
"Orochimaru-sama?" One of them asks. He's larger than the others, with bright orange hair in a strange style.
Orochimaru shakes his head. "Not now, children. I've work to do."
"But—"
"The invasion was a mistake. You will convince those who wish to continue to join in the retreat to Oto," Orochimaru cuts the girl off without even looking at her. "The woman in the air is immortal and powerful, and would make any attempts at a war very uncomfortable for all of us. She is also, unfortunately, a close friend of mine."
"You've never mentioned her," the boy with white hair says.
"For good reason," Orochimaru says, not explaining a thing. "Now, to end this…"
He claps his hands together, and Hiruzen knows that Fuuton technique. Orochimaru's voice booms out over the entire village when he speaks, spreading out and reaching everyone without being so loud as to damage eardrums this close.
"This is Orochimaru. Otogakure, this invasion has failed. Retreat at once. Sunagakure, your Kazekage has been dead for over a week, at my hands. I would apologize, but I can say with certainty that I was not myself at the time."
"Sarcastic little bastard," Tobirama mutters, arms crossed. "Accurate, of course, but still rude."
"So it would really be in your best interests to stand down as well," Orochimaru finishes, as though he'd not even heard Tobirama. "Deathless… I'll be in contact. You know where to look."
Orochimaru gives Hiruzen one last, inscrutable look. "She can give you the memories of what you did in those centuries, if she gave me mine. And… look after the children."
"What children?" Hiruzen asks before he can stop himself, but Orochimaru is gone, his skill dozens of levels above what it had been just minutes ago as they fought.
Centuries, they said. Centuries to train themselves up beyond what anyone could possibly do as a fighter.
He can believe it.
o.o.o.o.o
Sakura throws her head back and laughs.
Gods, but it's nice to have a friend back. He'd ditched her almost immediately, of course, and she's going to kick his ass for that, but he's here. He remembers. He's hers, and she's not letting go.
Her laughter echoes around the village, bouncing off of walls that aren't there (have never been, but will be, unless she changes things in ways she almost certainly will and oh won't that be fun). Her hair is pure white, straight as an arrow, and longer than she is tall, and it fans out around her like a peacock tail as she lets herself float down towards the arena. Tobirama and Hashirama are heading for her, Hiruzen and a pack of ANBU close on their heels, and the children that still haven't left the arena are staring at her in horror.
"I told you to run," she breathes out as she comes to a rest on the ground, head tilting to the side.
Ashura and Indra, Kaguya says, pacing her cage, eyes alight with interest. My grandsons.
Not quite, Sakura thinks back. "Why have you not run?"
"What are you?" Sasuke demands, taking an aggressive step forward.
Sakura looks dismissively at him, and barely flicks out a hand to repel him backwards with a minuscule gravity push. He only goes back a few feet, but it's enough to get a look of shock out of him. "Not now, little Uchiha. You'll know everything eventually, just. Not. Now."
She laughs again, a noise like shattered bells, all a'shimmering and sparkling and a shining noise that's still broken and cracked all over.
The shinobi all take a large, nervous step back.
"Gonna keep looking like my grandmother, Deathless?" Kurama asks. He does not appear to have found any pants. He does not appear to care.
"Until the situation stops suiting me, sure," Sakura quips, and it feels weird to say while wearing Kaguya's look like this, but it's not a new thing.
My boys, Kaguya insists, drawing Sakura's attention back to Sasuke and Naruto. Let me see them.
No.
LET ME SEE THEM.
FUCK OFF, YOU OLD HAG.
"Still suiting you?" Kurama asks, coming closer. "Or is it starting to get to be too much?"
"Oh, shut up."
Light footsteps hit the ground behind her.
"He's right, much as I hate to admit it."
Sakura turns to look at Tobirama, unimpressed. "That so?"
"People are leaving the village, Deathless. The invasion is over, or close to." Hashirama makes his way closer, careful. "Haven't you done as you said? Isn't it time to stop?"
"Is it ever time to stop?" Sakura asks. "There are many ways in which a life improves with more power."
"Think it's time to let Kaguya stop playing with your head?" Tobirama asks back, taking another step forward. "Or are you letting her take over once and for all?"
"You know that isn't going to work," Kurama says.
"Shut up," Tobirama says, not even bothering with propriety.
"He's right, though. Kaguya isn't taking over. I'm just taking from her!" Sakura laughs and spreads her arms, tossing her head back and spinning on the spot. "Power like this, it's exhilarating, don't you think?"
"I think you need to stop and reevaluate yo—"
Kurama cuts Tobirama off. "You're not going to get laid if you keep looking like my grandmother."
Sakura rolls her eyes at that, but it is one of the few things that's undeniably less pleasant about thi—
"Oh my fucking god," Sakura whines, dropping her head into her hands. "I thought I was done with this bullshit."
"Back to normal yet?" Shukaku asks, his gruff whisper of a voice carrying easily over from his seat against the wall. "Or do you need more threats of chastity?"
"Oh, fuck off you drunk old bastard," Sakura mutters, gradually returning to his usual appearance. She keeps rubbing at her head, ignoring Kaguya's screams. "Clever old bitch just keeps trying."
"Well, yeah, that's what happens when you seal away the woman who tried to take over the world," Shukaku says.
"The most powerful entity to ever walk this planet," Tobirama continues. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm still feeling a little uncomfortable with our current states."
Sakura gives him an odd look. "What are you talking about?"
"We weren't made using Zetsu clones," Hashirama explains. "We'd prefer to not be made using the corpses of children."
"Fair enough," Sakura says, sighing and ignoring the spluttering noises of the nearby living children, Genma, Hiruzen, and the ANBU. She looks down at her bare arm, covered in swirling storage seals, and presses her fingers to one. "I'll take care of Hashirama first. Someone go fetch the last coffin."
Tobirama disappears, and Sakura approaches Hashirama with one hand outstretched. "Shodai-sama."
"Deathless," he acknowledges with a smile. He ducks his head so that her hand can press to it. "I place myself in your care."
"Let's hope you don't regret that," Sakura mutters. Her other hand is on the storage seal for the Zetsu clone, ready to draw it out as a replacement sacrifice for the child she is about to free.
She closes her eyes and focuses on the chakra of the child within Hashirama. She does not remember the girl's name, though her voice and face are seared into Sakura's memory, centuries back. The girl that led to Sakura cutting her own hair and sacrificing her vanity for her career.
She was little more than a child when she died. Sakura will make sure that the girl doesn't pay for the mistakes of the Orochimaru of old.
Sakura unseals Zetsu.
In the same movement, she draws Kin from Hashirama's innards. The girl is screaming in agony.
She replaces the girl with Zetsu seamlessly, before the creature can even speak.
Hashirama stumbles a little, blinking.
Kin collapses to her knees, clutching at her chest and sobbing. She looks up at Sakura and scrambles away from her.
The children back away, eyes wide with terror and confusion. Tiny Sakura's eyes are particularly wide, focusing on the girl who tormented her in the Forest of Death.
"You'll be fine, girl," Sakura scoffs, and turns to Tobirama and the coffin that holds Minato. "Now, who's next?"
o.o.o.o.o
Sakura disappears as soon as she's assured herself that none of the Oto brats are going to be hurt. She has a soft spot for the village that destroyed itself time and again because it just kept taking in the broken and baseless. She has a soft spot for the children that let themselves be cut to pieces for more power just because there was no other way, no other choice, no other place to call home.
(She ignores the awkwardness that is Hiruzen and the zombies, the awkwardness that is Tiny Sakura's eyes on her, the awkwardness that is Minato and Naruto, the awkwardness that is the bijuu given human form sitting expectantly just a few meters away from their Jinchuuriki, the awkwardness that is the dead coming back to life and an unknown foreigner destroying an invasion.)
(She. Ignores. Everything.)
She disappears and makes her way to the base of a massive tree just a few miles outside of Konoha. She is good enough at hiding her chakra that none there will sense her, save perhaps Karin, if she's still in Konoha and at that level already.
"You're hard to find," a gravelly voice says behind her.
"Not really," she practically hums the words, not looking. "I just didn't leave until just now."
"Taking care of loose ends?"
"A few."
Orochimaru takes a careful seat beside her, chakra just as carefully coiled and hidden away as her own. She doesn't have to look to know that he's already pulled his hair back into an elegant bun, and is running his fingers absentmindedly over the curve of one purple tomoe earring. "You're angry."
"Furious."
"You found a way back."
"It took me eighty years, Oro," she says, and she's not ashamed to hear her voice crack on the words. "Eighty years with just bijuu and summons and clones to speak with."
"Edo Tensei clearly worked."
"You were my best friend, Oro. And you made it so I couldn't even bring you back to ask why you left."
"I had my reasons."
"I'm sure I'd love to hear them," she laughs. She knows he can hear how bitter she feels about it. He'd be a fool not to.
"I'm not sharing, dear."
"Typical."
They sit in silence for a few moments, and then he puts a hand over hers. "Sakura."
"Don't you dare."
"Sakura, look at me."
She takes a deep breath. She does not look. She stares ahead to a tree that is greener and leafier and healthier than it will be in five hundred years.
"Sakura, I'm sorry."
"Too little, too late."
"Sakura, you know what it was like, then. You know how much it hurt, to have failed, to be alone at the end."
"I wasn't alone until you left."
"As good as."
"You died!" She shouts, and there's a hot wetness on her face. Her fingers dig into the wood of the tree behind her, tensing despite herself. "You chose to die! You chose that! You chose to leave me alone so I'd lose my mind all over again!"
"Sakura—"
"There is no excuse!" She shouts, getting to her feet and whirling to face him. She knows she's crying. She can feel her cheeks turning a blotchy red already. "There is no excuse for leaving the way you did! You knew what would happen to me! You knew the summons and bijuu and Edo Tensei wouldn't be enough, and you left me anyway!"
"Sakura," Orochimaru breathes. "Sakura, I had to. I had—"
"Bullshit!" She screams. She's already lost her temper, she knows, but she will not hurt Orochimaru. She will damage nothing. "Bullshit! You had to do nothing! You could have helped me research time travel! You could have helped me figure out a way to cleanse the world and bring life back with cloning technology! You could have taken me with you, or at least left Edo Tensei as a way to call you back! You had to do nothing!"
"Sa—"
"You left me there!" She doesn't care that she's repeating herself. She doesn't care that there are tears streaming down her face, or that her voice is already hoarse. She doesn't care, so long as he understands. "You left me in a living hell!"
"S—"
"And you have the audacity to say that you had to do it?" She demands. "You think that excuses anything?"
"Sakura!" Orochimaru finally shouts at the top of his voice. "My children were dead. My teammates had been dead for centuries. I'm sorry I left you, but I was never solely responsible for your mental health, not when mine had been taking tolls of its own for my entire life. I am sorry, that I left you, and I am sorry that you dealt with what you did, but I chose to die because I could not bear to go on."
"Eighty. Fucking. Years." Sakura's teeth were grit, and she hissed the words through them. "EIGHTY. FUCKING. YEARS. I SPENT ALONE."
"Bijuu and summons and Edo Tensei," Orochimaru argued back.
"They don't count!"
"Don't they? What difference is there between me and an Edo Tensei, Sakura? What difference was there between my living presence and their dead ones, other than a pulse?"
"Because you're you!" Sakura screamed. "You're you, you asshole! You were my best friend for almost four hundred years! You were the only fucking constant in my hell of a life! It may have never been romantic or sexual like I joked, but dammit, I loved you and you left me. There were others that could help me with my research or reminisce or whatever the fuck you think I was doing with the Edo Tensei, but how the hell can you think I wouldn't miss my best fucking friend?"
She stopped talking then, and just took deep, heaving breaths. Her fists were clenched at her sides, chakra visibly dancing over the surface but not actually touching anything, and she could feel herself shaking. She couldn't see Orochimaru clearly through her tears, but she could see enough.
"…I'm sorry, Sakura, but you were never my responsibility. I broke. I'll admit that I broke. I know that what I did hurt you, but by that point, all I cared about was making it all stop. I wish, and dearly, that you didn't have to go through that. That you'd found a way back sooner, or that you'd found a way to die as well." He takes a deep, audible breath. "But I will remind you that my mental health and yours are two very different things. I am not a selfless creature, Sakura. I chose my own death to avoid a worse life, and while I am sorry that I left you in that position, I will not allow myself to regret what I did."
There is a pregnant silence, and Sakura cannot breathe.
She cannot force her lungs to work.
She feels as though she is drowning.
There.
Is.
No.
Air.
(She will not die.)
(She cannot die.)
(No matter how much she wants to.)
"Sakura?"
She finally takes a deep, shuddering breath, and collapses to her knees.
She will not feel ashamed for this. She refuses to feel ashamed, even as she sobs, taking in deep, jagged breaths that come back out as high-pitched keens and wails. Her hands clutch at her chest, digging bloody furrows into her neck and collarbone as she struggles to find some kind of purchase, something to ground her.
Sakura cannot calm herself.
She wishes she could.
"I am sorry," Orochimaru repeats, and comes to a stop in front of her. He gets to his knees and wraps his arms around her, pulling her into his lap as she cries out eighty years of loneliness, centuries pain and heartache. He pats her on the back, smooths her hair, whispers the same meaningless comforts he once spoke to his children after nightmares or first battles.
Sakura cries her heart out in the lap of the person she once considered her greatest enemy, and now considers her greatest friend.
"I forgive you."
"Thank you."
"But I can't let it go."
"I'm sorry."
"I know."